When This Time is Over – Giant Killers (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

I remember waxing lyrical about my first taste of Giant Killers and their masterful collection of poised and poignant, melodic and mature pop that was Songs for the Small Places. Anyone who can simultaneously remind me of all those great bands of my formative years, from Liberty Horses to Del Amitri, and lay out a sonic pathway to a whole new golden age for the genre (fingers crossed) is a band that I am obviously going to take to my heart. And I did.

And as if to prove that the previous album wasn’t a fluke, although I don’t see how writing ten near-perfect pop songs could be a fluke, most bands are hard-pressed to write one; they are back with another near-handful of sonic gems.

Ostensibly, this is a double A-side/double B-side release, which is a unique concept in itself but essentially amounts to the same thing: four songs do an ep make.

Things kick off with When This Time is Over, which again is pop of the highest order or at least a blend of spiralling indie riffs soaked in subdued pop pathos, which was always my kinda pop, anyway. Billy the Kid runs along on skittering percussion and guitar lines, which are as much about the spaces between them as the chords themselves. Home Time Blue is coiled and claustrophobic with a raw and raucous guitar line that a young Billy Bragg would have been proud of, and A Legacy of Sorts is hazy and hallucinogenic but also somehow punchy and pop-powered.

I am thinking of running off several pirate copies of this so that when the next smart arse indie-kid in a leather jacket and skinny jeans, sporting one of those complicated haircuts that they have nowadays tells me that pop is dead, I can smile enigmatically, drop this in his hand and say to him that everything is going to be alright.

PS: When I finished playing this on a well-known music platform, it auto-selected Tim Finn, the other brother of Crowded House fame, to play, and that should tell you everything you need to know.